So, why would I choose to play this game first over Super Mario World or Super Mario Bros 3?

I don't know, it just looked interesting and, basically no one ever talks about it, and, well.

I had a pretty fun time with it! It's a pretty enjoyable little game.

Peach controls really great, the variety of moves she has and the ones you unlock make her feel really capable and fun to control.

The levels are, very serviceable, if a bit forgettable, though in all honesty, 2D mario games don't really have very memorable levels in general, I mean, who can remember 3-2 from SMB 1 or, 5-3 from New Super Mario Bros U? It's basically the same case here.

The artstyle is, super cute! It feels like what an original Mario game would've looked like on the GBA and, I say that very much as a compliment, the animations on Perry the umbrella are also so expressive and adorable, I love how the game looks!

And the bosses are pretty fun actually, I enjoyed the bosses.

My main issue with the game is how overly-easy it is, it's closer to Kirby than Mario in difficult, finding all the collectibles doesn't make it any more difficult either so, yeah, I'd recommend you play this game on the side while tackling another, more difficult game, so you can come back to this one when you feel frustrated with the other game.

Overall, really fun and serviceable platformer, I really liked it!

"Breaking News: Big Earthbound Fan Plays Earthbound for First Time, is No Longer Earthbound Fan."

Jokes aside, with how much I've adored games like OMORI, Yume Nikki and the all of Toby Fox's work, this has always been a game that's on my bucket list.

I'd try to start it multiple times, but eventually get really frustrated by it; I'd tell myself it's just the early game that's bad, with how frustratingly difficulty it is.

So, for this one time, I powered through it, hoping to finally experience the entire game, and, well...

This is a 3/10 game with 10/10 moments.

For example: the battle system is pure dog shit.

Attacks miss more than they hit and it is so extremely basic with what you're able to do, there's no depth.

And you have to Constantly, throughout the entire game contend with enemies spamming status ailments and crits on you, with you often being unable to cure these ailments due to not having unlocked the appropriate Heal PSI, and not wanting to waste the inventory space on the specific item that heals it.

But also: Moonside is one of the most surreal and influential sequences of any game that's ever been made, it's genuinely so alien and creepy and it's executed so perfectly.

Another example: Navigation is needlessly slow, and often extremely frustrating with the constant spam of, not "Random Encounters" but basically "Forced Encounters" with how fast enemies can target you.

But also: that slow navigation adds to the tension and creepiness of certain sections, like Gigygas's lair or Moonside.

Example: Music is often really good!

But also: tracks like the dungeon man's music make me wanna rip my ears out.

Example: story is an incredibly barebones "chosen one defeats unspeakable evil", characters are barely given any amount of depths, dialogue from random NPCs is often grating (in my opinion at least), and the humor can be downright terrible with bosses like "big belch".

But also: Giygas is one of the most interestingly written bosses of any game that I've ever played, I'm not gonna go too further into it cause it's genuinely worth experiencing.

So in conclusion, this is a game of Extreme highs and Extreme lows, playing it is Awful, experiencing it is Amazing, I genuinely think you shouldn't play it, but I absolutely recommend watching a walkthrough of it, while I certainly felt really disappointed with it at the end, at the very least: it gives me more insight and appreciation of works that it inspired.

So, first things first: if you play this game on original hardware without any sort of speedup function.

This is a 0/10 absolute piece of fucking dogshit, horrific abomination of a programming mistake, how the actual hell did they make this game slower than the first one??? Why the fuck do I need to watch every deactivated enemy do Nothing? Why does field movement take SO LONG? Why are battles so slow, even with animations turned off????

But, if you do play this with speed up like I did, then this is honestly a really, really fun game!

The stages are designed incredibly well, always challenging but never unfair, and the plays you can make them in make you feel really smart!

The difficulty is pretty good all throughout the game actually, and while balancing is a bit off with how much better flying units are above all the others, very few of the demon races are outright "worthless", specially in the early game, and compared to the first game, your human protagonists don't become completely worthless near the end which is really good (tho they honestly get kinda, too good... I had one of my party members min-maxxing speed and attack and he killed the final boss in one turn).

Writing's quite good, the characters were endearing and bounced off of each other pretty well, the ending I got felt kinda weak but, that was the Neutral-Neutral ending so, who knows, maybe the other endings are better!

Visuals, I felt initially were really weak compared to the first game, but honestly? I've come to really like them! The GPS system aesthetic is done really well and it makes the game really readable.

Music is also Stellar but, if you play with speedup like I did, it unfortunately becomes too sped-up to be good.

So overall, a VAST improvement over Majin Tensei 1 and a really, really good game in its own right! I'd highly recommend this one if you like TRPGs!

Shitty story, shitty combat where everything just dies to the double-barrel no matter the range, incredibly easy, and just kinda atrocious all around.

Its only redeeming quality is how short it is.

Also, am I the only one who's tired of these "indie FPS boomer shooters" that are made in GZDoom? They all feel the same.

This is just a really excellent TRPG

Gameplay is really funny, lets you play in a variety of playstyles: from hyper-aggression to slow turtling, and the "link" mechanic just makes you feel like such a genius (or absolute moron) at times, it's really great.

The story as well is really fun, it feels very grounded initially but gets kinda anime by the end with how the characters are portrayed, still. I like the character diversity!

Visuals are incredibly gray and muted, which I personally really enjoy considering the game's setting, it has a really industrial and brutalist feel to it.

Sound effects are honestly one of the game's real highlights, the sound of a rifleman's shot landing into the body of a wanzer makes my brain create the happy chemicals.

Really liked this one! Looking forward to playing its sequel!

I think to fairly judge this game, you have to recognize.

What was the intended audience for this when it released? And the answer is:

Sega kids, who never owned an NES and never played the Mega Man games, but still know who the character is, which, with me playing it in the modern age... That kinda applies to me.

I've never played any of the Mega Man games, so I didn't see repeat robot masters or reused assets from the NES games, all that I saw was: a Really, Really nice looking game gear game!

And, me not being experienced with Mega Man, the game's lower difficulty made it a lot more palatable for me, as well as its shorter length, it was a really fun, bite-sized showcase of what Mega Man is!

I'm sure this game is a lot worse to those who are familiar with the series but, considering that's not the intended audience, it does a really good job of giving new-comers to the series a taste of what it's about, and it honestly makes me excited to give the mainline games a go!

I mostly played this game for its visuals because of how Chaotix-ish it looks, but, I was pretty pleasantly surprised with a really fun run and gun!

Level design is much less straight-forward than games like Contra or Metal Slug which, I really like.

Weapons feel really satisfying to use, though their variety is sadly really limited.

Music is, honestly a tad overrated? But it fits the game pretty well nonetheless.

And of course the game is very wonderful visually and detailed beyond belief, not on the same level as chaotix for me but... considering this was made with stock Genesis hardware, I'm incredibly impressed!

The big sorepoint for me was the final boss, that thing is just kind of bullshit to fight if you didn't find all the health upgrades, he removes half a star from my rating by himself.

I honestly have to wonder what the thought process behind this game's creation was, like...

It's no secret Sonic games are generally on the shorter side, the previous Rush game only took me about 7 hours to beat both Sonic and Blaze's campaigns and get all chaos emeralda and, I'm someone who'll restart a level a dozen times if they feel like they're not playing it well.

Did the original Rush mostly get rented instead of bought by players? Was it a game that people traded-in frequently at gamestop? It feels like a lot of the design decisions made with Rush Adventure were a result of something like that.

The vehicle sections, the crafting system that'll require to finish stages multiples of times, the overly obnoxious and long boss battles, it all feels somewhat like padding.

Still, when it comes to the Zones, the level design, I'd say it's generally an improvement over the first game!

The high highs are still there with really fun levels like Haunted ship and Pirates' Island, oh and Blizzard Peaks is actually one of the best Sonic levels ever made; the only level that's really any bad is Sky Babylon, the rest are really fun to play!

The hidden islands as well are super cool, they basically add an extra act to each of the levels as well as a brand new zone, they were really fun to pnay through!

The vehicles you use to discover and reach the levels though... are a bit of mixed bag, the water bike and hovercraft I found really fun! While the sailboat and the submarine especially felt incredibly boring.

And unfortunately, due to the game's structure, you'll find yourself using the sailboat the most out of all the vehicles, which... is pretty unfortunate.

I think it'd have been a lot better if you only had the water bike to use and for you to upgrade it over the game to make it faster and travel longer but, it is what it is.

One really odd thing about this game is how you're allowed to pick your character at the start of each level as opposed to it being split into two campaigns which, considering that Blaze is just a better Sonic, is kind of a dumb design decision, I think they should've redesigned her to make her play more distinctly if they were gonna let you always be able to pick her.

And speaking of characters and the story in general, it's honestly pretty bad compared to the first game, feels like the plot to a saturday morning cartoon, but... at least Marine is pretty funny.

What I'm trying to say with all this rambling is, this game is really fucking good, but god does it feel really disconnected and unfocused, I think you should give it a try, but if you find yourself getting bored of all the backtracking and vehicle stuff, just download a completed save file from the internet to play the rest of the zones.

I think, this is the definition of a Dimps Sonic game.

Absolutely incredible soundtrack.

Amazing controls and physics.

Great new characters with really well thought out designs and personalities.

Wonderful artstyle.

And... unfortunately.
Dogshit special stages.

And level design that oscillates between Amazing and Torturous.

While levels like Water Palace and Dead Line are genuinely some of the best Sonic levels I've ever played in the series, Huge Crisis and Night Carnival are actually fucking painful to play.

One thing I've noticed about Dimps playing their games compared to the classic genesis games is, a lot of the offbeaten paths and obscure areas that Sonic Team would have shield/ring monitors in, Dimps just has... bottomless pits or dead ends in.

And while it might take you dropping from 3 to 4 upper paths in the genesis games before you're thrown in a pit, it's usually only 1 to 2 paths in Dimps's games, or 0 with the instant death lasers!

And the special stages are just... you need to have the reaction time of a top 10 fighting game player to have a chance at beating, I frankly just cheated and would constantly pause the game so I can move Sonic to the one spot that doesn't have 10 million spike balls.

That said, their highs are incredibly high, their levels that I enjoy I don't just "like", I absolutely Adore.

And the additions they made with the boost meter and tricking, and Blaze the cat, are really wonderful inclusionsthat ended up influencing the main games later down the line!

I also really appreciate them giving so much attention to Cream, she's a sweetheart!

And it's really sad to me they stopped making games for the franchise! I'd have loved to see how Sonic Superstars had turned out if they were the one to make it, or at least, I'd love to see them make smaller bite sized Sonic games alongside Arzest, because what they've made in their peak is with the Advance and Rush games is really wonderful.

Incredibly short and simplistic but uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Parsnip.

Is a cutie.

I love him.